Don't you love those commercials that paint the world as a place in perfect harmony? Where everyone is happy? Where children play together happily? Where everyone is optimistic?

While it always seems to be asking too much, that didn't stop Publicis Hong Kong from creating this feel-good Western Union commercial in which floating blobs of yellow form the word "yes" reaffirming that, yes, life does move forward and people are saying yes to a brighter future.

Hoping to take the euphemistic "special" out of "Special Olympics," TDA ADVERTISING & DESIGN/Boulder developed a print campaign that focuses on the sporting similarities between the event you watch and that other one.

"The typical perception of 'Special Olympics' is young children with Down Syndrome, playing track and field. We want to change that," said VP-Marketing Heather Hill of the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games. "The majority of our athletes are serious, adult competitors."

Online banner ads -- which are also cute, if a little Clip-Arty -- include Snowman, Cocoa and Car. (Forgive us if these links break; they're hosted by Mullen.) These are slightly different from their print counterparts: in them, ordinary things take the shape of turtles over time, taking advantage of the 'net's ability to seize roving eyes. Frankly, the print stuff is better.

Work by Mullen/Wenham, MA. There's also radio material, which we didn't get to hear.

Offline in newspaper, ads at the bottom of the page were integrated with editorial so that text, as it was online, is altered to, in one case, turn red and, in another, blur as if heat were rising from the banner.

The agency, Touche PHD, tells us the altered text in the newspapers was part of the actual editorial rather than it being either a fake story or greeked.

- The Newspaper Association of America reports newspaper ad revenue fell 18.1 percent or almost $2 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Online newspaper ad revenue fell as well.

- AdGabber member Buddy Wachenheimer envisions what condom packaging would look like if it were sponsored.

- If your an agency struggling with workload after having laid off half your staff, check out YouIntern. It's always nice to, as YouIntern proudly states in its tagline, gain "freedom from coffee and coffee" so you can work on the more important stuff like sitting in a traffic meeting. Oh wait. Sorry about that. Bad example.

Under its classic slogan "There is always a clever mind behind it," German paper The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is running a campaign depicting various "clever minds." At left is UN Chief Inspector Mohamed ElBaradei in a state of exceptional transparency.

As only Consumer Reports can do - being all unbiased and all - a new full page ad appearing in Monday's USA Today will inform shoppers "There is no 'bailout clause' in your credit card contract."

Damn, what a way to rain on the annual Holiday credit card spree! But with consumers owing upwards of a trillion dollars in debt, using cash to buy Christmas gifts this year might not be such a bad thing...or habit to get into as we all play out part in reducing America's debt. Which, by the way, we did to ourselves and should get out of ourselves without a government bailouot...which will only cost us later.

Admittedly, economics isn't Adrants' strong suit but it seems obvious if you can't afford to buy something you should just, well, not buy it. No matter how much you want it or how cheaply a bank will lend you money.

The economy shake-up means hard times for everybody, but print news weeklies are probably among the heaviest-laden. Few people are willing to wait a day to see news in print; fewer still have the patience for a week, not when they can load Google News and have at it instantaneously.

In a desperate bid at self-preservation, the LA Weekly has launched "LONG LIVE PRINT." Weeklyites invaded the Detour Festival in Downtown LA to wave signs, distribute bookmarks(cringe) and ink the message onto other people's shirts with a printing press(nifty!).

Other media ran on newsstands and in the LA Weekly itself. See the creative in all its grungy glory:

Cool work by Ignited LA. Painfully valiant though, given that we've never thought much about the LA Weekly, and now we associate it with the struggle of by-weeklies to remain relevant in an increasingly by-the-Tweet kind of world.